Designer Spotlight: Chris Fischer

This week we are highlighting Chris Fischer, a New Yorker, 3D jeweler and one talented 17 year old! Chris’s desire to model started with wanting a pendant for his mom, and couldn’t find what he was looking for. He’s since grown an amazing shop full of unique jewelry.

Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? Where are you located?
I’m a high school student just north of NYC and I’m currently 17. Growing up, I was always fascinated with building things, whether it was out of sticks and rocks or Legos. Now that I’m a junior and approaching college, I finally have the opportunity to study engineering.

What’s the story behind your designs? What inspires you?
I like to think that my design style is quite diverse, and while one of my main focuses is simple, elegant, geometric designs, I am regularly inspired by everything around me. There so much in the world to look at, I wouldn’t want to simply focus on one thing. And as my skills improve and I learn more about 3D modeling, my designs improve as well. It’s so fun to look back and see how far you’ve come in just a couple years.

What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?
Three years ago I started looking for a pendant with three hearts for mother’s day. Luckily, I wasn’t able to find one, which led me to pursue a way to design one myself. Shapeways was the first site that came up and the fact that they used 3D printing to create real metal objects totally blew my mind. I was hooked instantly. And although it took me over 9 months to learn enough to actually make that three heart necklace, it’s now one of my most popular designs.

How did you learn how to design in 3D?
I have never had any formal training for design, let alone 3D design. It has always fascinated me, but I never knew how to make the ideas in my mind a reality until I found Blender. The main reason wasn’t that it was free, but that the online community is enormous. Multiple summer days, and nights, were spent without leaving my desk at all, simply watching tutorials and learning the ways. Without the community, I can say with absolute certainty that I would not be here.

How do you promote your work?
At the beginning of Fischfluous, I tried to use as many different social networks as I could, but I quickly found that to be much too time consuming and unproductive for a one-man show. Nowadays, I have focused my attention mainly on Twitter to announce new products and Shapeways and 3DFileMarket to sell them. And although I’ve managed to scrape by on a zero advertising budget, I imagine that will change in the coming months.

Who are your favorite designers or artists? Who in the Shapeways community has served as an inspiration to you?
The community was one of those things that I had not anticipated on getting into Shapeways. But it’s so cool to communicate within this network of 3D modelers that I never knew existed just a few years ago, like Ian Garrett on Twitter. Other than that, Nervous System continues to blow my mind every day with their generative designs and Michael Muller with his fantastic 3D sculpting. Fischfluous attempts to be a combination of those two design philosophies: mathematic yet handmade.

If you weren’t limited by current technologies, what would you want to make using 3D printing?
One of my biggest hopes for the future is interlocking metal parts. But I’m sure you geniuses at Shapeways will figure that out soon enough.

Anything else you want to share?
To anyone looking to join this amazing community, my advice would be to go for it. Just because you didn’t major in 3D design doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. Get online and start learning!

WHAT WE LOVE ABOUT THIS SHOP:

Really great photography

Great branding

Fun variety of products

Sections for easy shopping

Keep up the really amazing work, Chris. So amazing you’ve taught yourself and managed to get that pendant to your mom no matter what! Don’t forget to check out his shop, Fischfluous.